CHAPTER XIII.

FAILURE FROM LEAKS.

IT was midsummer of the next year when Aunt Mercy returned for a visit to her old home, and Lily with the baby accompanied her. The little fellow was teething, and the old lady advised a change of air.

Lizzie was just through her summer term, and was hesitating whether to engage for the winter, when they arrived. She was eager to take advice, and was easily persuaded to delay her return home for a few weeks. Dr. Greenough long before this had ventured to tell the young teacher that he was earning a home for her; and now he urged her to give up teaching, as his business was sufficiently profitable to justify him in taking a wife. He called at once upon Aunt Mercy, hoping to win her over to his views, as, since that first catechizing, as he termed it, she had been a firm friend.

But, after hearing all his arguments, she agreed with Lizzie that it would be better to wait another year. His business, it was true, was extending, but he was dependent entirely on his parents for means to commence housekeeping. While if they postponed their marriage a year, his expenses were slight, living as he did at his father's, and she could be earning something toward her outfit. At the end of that time, she would be only eighteen, quite young enough, Aunt Mercy thought, to assume the cares of housekeeping.

Lily plead for the young physician, and made Harry fold his hands and say, "Pease, tousin."

But, though Lizzie loved her all the more for this interest in her friend, she was convinced that Aunt Mercy was right.

The doctor submitted rather ungraciously to this decision, but was obliged to be content with her laughing promise to be very dutiful at the end of the prescribed period.

One evening he called, and the conversation turned on Aunt Mercy's favorite subjects, prudence and economy. He remarked,—

"If young people would only begin right, there would be no need of their spending half their lives in stopping the leak."

Dr. Greenough laughed.

"I never heard that term before," he said, "but it is so applicable to a case I knew in college, I must tell you the story.

"In my Sophomore year I became acquainted with a young man, a classmate, by the name of Storm. His parents lived in the city, only three miles from college; and I used often to accompany him home. Mr. Storm lived in great splendor in one of the most fashionable streets, keeping his carriages of different sorts for the convenience of the family. But his especial delight was his library, which was one of the most extensive private libraries within my knowledge. He had a perfect passion for books; and everything rare, antique, or elegant could be found on his shelves. He employed agents in England to search for books new and books old to add to his immense collection."

"I should call that his leak," remarked Lily, laughing.

"Indeed, it proved so; but I am too fast for my story.

"Horace, my friend, was a great reader, and could gather up the knowledge contained in a volume quicker than any person I ever knew. He never passed a book-store or an antiquarian stall without stopping to purchase, if he found anything to admire. I have known him spend twenty dollars day after day in this manner. And when once I remonstrated, he laughingly assured me that his father had given him 'carte-blanche' in the purchase of literature.

"I used to go home with Horace once a week regularly. There was a young lady," he added, with an arch glance at Lizzie, "very pretty and very desirous of fascinating; and then we used often to run to the city for an hour in the evening, especially if my friend had found any rare volume to add to his father's collection.

"Besides books, paintings of every description were included in Mr. Storm's mania. There was a large hall in his house, and the walls were completely lined with elegant paintings and engravings.

"Suddenly I noticed that Horace ceased to call for me to go home with him. He bought no more books, and grew daily more gloomy. To all my questions he answered, petulantly, 'There is nothing the matter.'

"But one day I was astonished more than I can tell you by finding a note from him on my table, when I returned from recitation. It simply said,—

"'DEAR ALBERT,—The game is up. There is no need for me to conceal longer what by to-morrow will be in all the papers. My father has failed in business for a large amount, double what he is worth. Everything has gone with a crash,—library, paintings, statuary, and all. My parents leave for Europe in the next steamer, unable to meet the loss among old friends. I am penniless, and have lost faith in everybody. Perhaps even you, the best friend I ever had, will forsake me; if so, life is worthless.

"'HORACE STORM.'"

"Poor fellow!" faltered Lizzie. "But I'm sure I've heard the name somewhere."

"Do you remember the gentleman who called with me one day at your school to inquire for Willie? He wore at that time gray spectacles."

"Oh, yes, indeed!"

"That was Horace. He was passing a few days with me, and I had told him about a certain teacher whose services I was trying to engage for life. He had a natural curiosity to see her, and so I—"

"Oh, the depravity of man!" exclaimed Lily, pitying poor Lizzie's embarrassment. "And so you planned a wicked excuse to criticise my little cousin?"

"You had better finish your story, doctor," coolly remarked Aunt Mercy.

"I have little more to say. The family embarked for Europe."

"Pretty young lady and all?" archly inquired Lily.

"Yes, the young lady, and as much property as they could manage to get together unknown to the creditors, leaving my classmate, who had too much honor to accompany them, to look out for himself. He had been troubled for a year with affection of the eyes, or he would have accepted the offer of the professors, and finished his college course. But the distress he was in, together with his sleepless nights, aggravated the difficulty, and he had to give up study altogether. He tried to get employment, and for a year peddled books and engravings from house to house."

"Where is he now?" eagerly asked Lizzie.

"He is teacher in a deaf and dumb asylum, for which he has a singular aptness. The influence he has over the scholars is wonderful. He is a noble fellow, as you will all say, when I tell you to what use he put his first earnings in the institution. When the family broke up, his mother owed a poor seamstress over fifty dollars, which she could ill afford to lose. Somehow Horace found it out, and sent her the money, though at the time he was greatly in need of clothes."

"There are a great many good people in the world!" exclaimed Lily, with deep feeling. "I should like to know that man, and to have Harry know him when he is older."

"If he could do it, he would like to stop the leak which his parents' extravagance has made, especially his father's passion for books, statuary, and paintings, which were, most of them, sacrificed for a song."

"Where are his parents now?"

"Still in France. They would scarcely venture back. Horace rarely mentions them. But he did say that they had not escaped from trouble by fleeing the country. They were living, the last I knew, in a little village, where Mr. Storm had found some business: barely sufficient to support them. His mother embroidered collars to eke out a living."

"And the pretty young lady?"

"Her fate is too sad to repeat," was the concise reply, in a tone which prevented farther remark.

"Fortunately, Aunt Mercy, you were at hand to prevent so dreadful a result to our leak," faltered Lily, looking up from her babe with a smile and a tear. "I shall teach Harry to live so prudently that there will be no leak."

"But, Mrs. Lovell, don't you approve of giving in charity?"

"You don't know her as well as we do, or you wouldn't ask that," urged Lizzie, in an enthusiastic tone.

"Certainly I do," was the old lady's reply, "but we must give what is our own, and not what we owe for debts. I don't believe in doing, as one of my father's acquaintances did, and give so profusely that his own family came to want, and his wife, with her two daughters, was obliged to resort to slop-work to save themselves from starvation. They worked day and night, trying to stop the leak the husband and father had made by his injudicious generosity, until, at the end of two years, the daughters fell ill of disease, brought on by close confinement, and died, and the broken-hearted mother soon followed them."

"But this kind of leak is very uncommon; for more err in giving too little, rather than too much. There ought to be system and judgment in benevolence as well as in anything else."

Lady-bird blushed. This had been a fruitful source of discussion between them. A generous impulse led the wife to give everything she possessed to the first needy object which presented itself. In this way she was frequently imposed upon, and afterwards regretted her charity.

"All can't expect to be as shrewd judges of character as you are," she urged, half laughing. "You know you discovered Tom was a rogue the first time you saw him."

"Yes; and it didn't take me long to find out Ann either. But we must allow experience to be our teachers. When a man or woman comes to my door with a voluble story of destitution, which they roll off their tongues like a parrot, I suspect they are telling me a false tale. You remember how quickly that poor woman dropped her mask of piety the other day, and began to curse me, when I pointed out to her some inconsistencies in her story."

"But, Aunt Mercy," urged Lizzie, "I have heard you say you had rather give to ten impostors than have one really destitute go from your door unrelieved."

"And so I had, but there is generally not much difficulty in discerning who are really needy, or to distinguish between those who are suffering for want of employment and who are too lazy to work."

"Giving to the poor is one of the luxuries I find it very hard to be deprived of," faltered Lily, gravely. "I often ask myself what if my boy should ever be in want of food? Wouldn't I wish some one to take compassion on him, even if he were indolent?"

"I think my father's way a good one," remarked Dr. Greenough. "He lays by so much every month for charitable purposes, though he often exceeds it in emergencies, promising himself to make it up the next month. He is cautious, though, in the selection of his objects."

"Which makes his money go twice as far," added Aunt Mercy, smiling.